Collegium Novum
Trail of War
The main building of the Jagiellonian University. On 6 November 1939 the Germans arrested 184 members of the academic community in an operation called Sonderaktion Krakau. Most were sent to the Sachsenhausen camp.
History
The neo-Gothic building, now the main building of the Jagiellonian University, was built in 1883-1887 on the site of two former student hostels, to a design by Feliks Księżarski. On 6 November 1939, on the orders of the Germans, the rector Tadeusz Lehr-Spławiński called a meeting of academic staff here, at which a lecture on the German view of science and higher education was supposedly to be given. The meeting took place in the room that is now number 56. Instead of a lecture, arrests began: as part of Sonderaktion Krakau the Germans detained 184 people, mainly professors and lecturers of the Jagiellonian University and the Academy of Mining. Most were sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. 101 of the prisoners were released on 8 February 1940, but at least 20 of those arrested died in the camp or were murdered. A commemorative plaque has been set into the wall of the room.
Did you know?
The arrest of the Kraków professors caused international outrage: 24 countries and the Vatican protested. Even Fascist Italy intervened, and in January 1940 its foreign minister, Galeazzo Ciano, instructed his embassy in Berlin to press for the release of the Polish academics.